JBMulligan
Starfish

Waves
break
and spread,
flattening
into lace-trimmed sheets
that slide up the slope of the shore,

pause,
then
slowly
recede 'til
they are swallowed by
the wide, white-lipped mouth of the next

wave.
Light
behind
me drops in
the perfect empty

sky.
Bleak
mountains
loom behind
the dark hotels and
houses of this frozen August

town,
brute
silent
witnesses
to joy vanishing
beneath the broad, blue graveyard sea.

Wife.
Son.
Candles
toppled and
swept away into
nothing. Holes in surrounding air,

laughs,
eyes,
voices

lost.
Holes
in sand
where the crabs
flee from screaming gulls.

Shells.
Stones.
Seaweed
in tangled
wreaths in a ragged
border along the waterline:

here,
there
is no
more meaning
than death's cold necklace

on
life's
warm throat.

Scores
of
broken
crosses tell
where hunger wandered
relentlessy, bending to peck,
to feed or miss, to flap and screech angrily away

while
more
wide mouths
and white wings
circled and dropped down.

Holes
filled
with sand
and water,
hopping like sand fleas,
dancing like flies, dying like stars
that bloom and unpetal in the black meadows of night

where
loss
doesn't
ever die.

I
miss
what filled
the hollow
universe of me,
what stretched me with joy and purpose,
centered me at the luminous center of it all

(I
stop
to pick
a shell up
and sling it, skip it
off the water's stony surface

'til
it
slides and
disappears),

what
I
can't have,
can only
hold the absence of,
a shell cracked and emptied on sand,

dark
star
sucking
emptiness
as if it were life.

Gulls
cry,
seaweed
dries and crisps
in the heat, and I

walk
on
empty
sand cluttered
with flotsam of what

once
was,
plodding
stunned by light
along the ragged
shoreline graveyard, hot charnel house
above which demons shriek, waiting to feed on fresh souls.

She
was
so fresh,
fruit of some
impossible tree
in the garden of amazement.

He
was
so brief.

I
am
a bone
of my life
left by the water
among life's bright, brittle garbage.

A
dead
starfish
tangled in
seaweed. Carrion
waiting for flies and birds to feed,
or scavengers on the bottom, if it washes back –

it
glides
above
water and
splashes, vanishes....

I
see
the dead
memory
of her tossing bread
to impatient swans, while he laughed
and leaned into my leg, awed and frightened by the birds.

This
is
what's left.
Shells on sand.

Foam
spreads,
swerves and
dissipates
as another wave
melts into its oblivion.

Small
holes
where crabs
have delayed
what will be, again.

Shells.
Stones.
Driftwood.
Necklaces
of seaweed draped on
the motionless breast of the shore.
All the dead memories of what will never happen.

School.
Sleep.
Running
on the lawn
toward or away
from all the things he'll never know

while
she
never
laughs as she
cheers him on, or bends
to scoop him up, away from tears.

There,
out
on the
horizon,
a black speck
of boat, motionless
moment by moment, as I watch,
chops through the torn waves I can't see, trembles and bounces,
bearing minds that see, in the spray, faces, houses, eyes that will flicker like candles when

they
see....

They
will
return.
Eyes will come
back to what they saw.
That keeps happening all over.

I
am
a hole
on a beach
that water fills up
and washes away with the waves,
wrapped perhaps in the bubbles swept away in the foam.

One
black
crab shell
to pick up
and skip on the sea.

Gone.

Sea
glass.
Driftwood.
Seaweed whorls.
The sharded remains
of bodies shattered under waves

or
dropped
from high
onto rocks.

Life
feeds life.

I
eat
nothing
since that's all
there is left for me.

Beer
will
keep you
going for
a while, I have found.
At least it helps you not to stop.

I
stop.
Below
me, there is
a starfish waving
five stubby, white, tube-footed arms
trying to grab the warm air and turn itself over.

There
is
no one
around me.
Its mouth is open.

It
drowns
in air.

Foam
crests
two feet
down the slope
of the shoreline, holds
an instant, then recedes. Is gone.

One
more
wave comes.
Gulls cry out.

I
bend
and pluck
the starfish,
stride into the sea,
waves clutching my leg, slowing me,
the water clear as glass through which I may never pass

and
reach
them both.
It struggles.
So many small parts.

It
leaves
my hand
as it sinks.
It angles away
and drops, and soon it disappears.

I
wait,
hip-deep
in the waves.